Heslam: Grim details emerge in slaying of mother of 3

Prosecutors lay out case in 2011 killing

Credit: Angela Rowlings

CHARGED WITH MURDER: Eldrick Broom listens yesterday during opening statements in his rape and murder trial at Suffolk Superior Court.

As 16-year-old Navila Nunez got ready for school on the morning of Nov. 21, 2011, she saw her mother peacefully sleeping in their Mattapan apartment, her chest rising and falling with each breath.

But when the teen got home that day, she found her beloved mother’s cold, dead body.

A computer cord and pair of socks had been tied “unmercifully” tight around Rosanna Mirielle Camilo De Nunez’s neck. She’d been stripped from the waist down.

That was the scene painted in gruesome detail by prosecutor Gretchen Lundgren yesterday on the first day of the trial against former Boston Medical Center janitor Eldrick Broom, who is charged with raping and murdering the married mother of three.

“The defendant terrorized, brutalized and violated Rosanna Mirielle Camilo De Nunez, and left her dead body for her 16-year-old daughter to find,” Lundgren told jurors.

Rosanna, 34, had come here from the Dominican Republic to get better medical care for her 18-month-old son, the prosecutor said, while her husband stayed back home with their two other children.

At the time of her murder, Rosanna had been in Mattapan since early summer. Her daughter came to live with her in August. Broom, 29, lived in an apartment across from Rosanna’s and moved out in November, Lundgren said, but he “continued to linger” around Rosanna’s building.

The day before Rosanna’s slaying, Broom was sitting on the steps of her building and helped her with her carriage and groceries when she returned home with her kids. The prosecutor said investigators found Broom’s DNA on the victim and around her. The prosecutor described the agony of being strangled to death.

About 10 of Rosanna’s relatives were in court, their anguish heightened when Broom’s attorney told jurors Broom had a “sexual encounter” with Rosanna the night before her murder but insisted that he didn’t kill or rape her.

“He knew her for months ... He was the only man that she was sort of friendly with at the place,” said attorney Norman Zalkind. “He was attracted to her.”

When he first spoke to police, Broom was “completely worried” about his pregnant girlfriend finding out that he had “some sexual relationship” with Rosanna so he didn’t mention it, Zalkind said.

But now, his attorney said, Broom is going to have the “courage” to take the stand.

Let’s hope Rosanna’s family has the strength to make it through the trial.